Engineers at MIT Developed New Way to Stop Severe Internal Bleeding

A group of Engineers and Scientists at the Hammond & Olsen labs, Massachusetts Institute of  Technology (MIT) US has developed a new way to halt severe internal bleeding. 

The discovery which was made known in a publication by the Department of Chemical Engineering at the institution, stated that the technology mimics the body natural clotting process to help a victim stay alive pending the time a medical treatment in a hospital is perform on the victim. 

The technology which is said to be an injectable two components system could be used at the site where a victim sustained a severe internal injury helping to form blood clot like the natural way the body system will do it, thereby offering a way to keep the victim alive until he is able to receive proper medical attention in a hospital. 

The engineers at MIT reveal that the two components system (a nanoparticles and a polymer) when applied in a mouse model of internal injury perform well better than the hemostatic nanoparticles that were developed earlier. 

The publication says that the level of recovery noticed in the animal study was remarkable noting that by applying the two complementary system one after the other produced stronger clot. 

The main difference between the previously developed hemostatic systems and the newly invented  MIT technology is that it mimics the actions of both platelets and fibrinogen, a protein that helps forms clots. 

The publication explain that:

When internal injuries occur, platelets are attracted to the site and initiate the blood clotting cascade, which eventually forms a sticky plug of platelets and clotting proteins, including fibrinogen. However, if patients are losing a lot of blood, they don’t have enough platelets or fibrinogen to form clots. The MIT team wanted to create an artificial system that could help save people’s lives by replacing both of those clotting components. 


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